4 ms·

True. I've wondered the same thing, and always come back to inexpensive Ryzens on ASRock motherboards that I simply underclock.

benoau 2y ago
We're kind of stumbling into a golden age of home NAS devices and while there aren't any ready-to-go ECC options yet, you can buy lovely little cases to support your own components. I think we'll surely see ECC in the next generation of AOOSTAR and similar devices, nobody making these devices has any motivation to never implement ECC.
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  How exactly are companies like AOOSTAR going to implement ECC if it's not supported by the CPU vendor (which is Intel)? AMD CPUs are useless for these home NAS devices if your goal is to build a low-power media server, which I think is one of the main use-cases (why else would you want to store tens of terabytes of data at home?).
  - benoau 2y ago
    ECC has been growing in support since ~12th generation Intel (currently 14th) and before that for AMD I think, so it is only a matter of time before this trickles down into the little NAS boxes.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      >ECC has been growing in support since ~12th generation Intel (currently 14th) It is? How so? I don't see it anywhere outside their server and embedded products. The server-grade stuff isn't appropriate for "the little NAS boxes" used at home because of both expense and more importantly power consumption, and the embedded stuff just isn't really available to consumers (so it might be potentially great for a company like Synology that builds consumer-friendly pre-built NAS boxes running on proprietary software, but it's not useful to people building their own DIY NAS boxes running open-source software).
      - sirn 2y ago
        ECC is supported on any higher end 12th/13th Gen, but it's locked behind a chipset feature lock. If you can find any board that uses W680 (e.g. W680D4U-2L2T which can be had on Amazon for $569), then it's possible to use ECC UDIMM on Intel Core and have ECC detected/reported.
        shiroiushi 2y ago
        >e.g. W680D4U-2L2T which can be had on Amazon for $569 Yeah, that cost puts it out of reach for the typical home users building relatively inexpensive little DIY media server boxes, and places it firmly in "server" territory. A standard motherboard for these CPUs (typically using a B760 chipset) is a very small fraction of that cost. It's good to know this factoid, but it still basically supports my prior assertion that on Intel, ECC support is basically only for servers.
  - justinclift 2y ago
    The very old HP Microserver Gen7's used a low power AMD cpu, as did the original Gen10 model. The Gen7 things would never be useful for transcoding on cpu though, waaaaaay too underpowered. But they did have a PCIe slot for add-in cards (ie small gpu or network card).
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      Of course you can add a GPU card on the PCIe slot, but this 1) takes away a slot, and PCIe lanes, that you might want to use for connecting storage devices (such as a SATA HBA card), and 2) this will probably poorly affect your system's overall power consumption, which is a big factor for home users building NAS/media server boxes. Intel's QuickSync performs extremely well, with very low power (esp at idle) for 4k transcoding, for very low cost, while not needing any PCIe lanes; it's why these CPUs are so popular for this application. Unfortunately, Intel stupidly refuses to allow ECC support on non-Xeon chips, so that's a big drawback, as ECC is really useful for a storage server (or really anywhere).
      - justinclift 2y ago
        > Intel stupidly refuses to allow ECC support on non-Xeon chips They at least used to support ECC on some models of i3 chips as well. My understanding was that was specifically to support ECC on lower power NAS systems. Random examples: • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/90729/intel-core-i3-6100-processor-3m-cache-3-70-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/90729/i... (6th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/97455/intel-core-i3-7100-processor-3m-cache-3-90-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/97455/i... (7th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/129944/intel-core-i3-8100t-processor-6m-cache-3-10-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/129944/... (8th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/190886/intel-core-i3-9100f-processor-6m-cache-up-to-4-20-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/190886/... (9th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/203899/intel-core-i3-10100te-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-60-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/203899/... (10th gen i3) Looking over random i3 pages from 11th gen onwards though, I'm not even seeing ECC mentioned on the pages at all. It's not a "yes/no" item like on the older generation ones pages, it's completely absent (from the ones I just checked). :(
shiroiushi 2y ago
The problem with those inexpensive Ryzens is that they don't have iGPUs with Intel QuickSync so they can't transcode video with high efficiency. This makes them unsuitable for use for media servers, which is what a lot of people are doing with these chips these days: building home NAS/media servers that combine both functions into a single, small, low-power unit. You put a bunch of HDDs in it so you can store tens of terabytes of movies using RAID to protect against drive failures, and run Jellyfin or Plex on it. Plus you can use the box for other regular NAS tasks too, as well as many other convenient applications. Intel chips are virtually required here since AMD chips are useless for transcoding, and require external GPU cards which destroy the system's power efficiency which was one of the main points of getting one of these low-power Intel chips in the first place.
- Teever 2y ago
  Doesn't AMD make Ryzens that also have iGPUs that work with jellyfin/plex transcoding?
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    From what I've read, the AMD offerings here are not at all competitive with Intel's QuickSync.
    - adrian_b 2y ago
      While Intel QuickSync remains faster in CPUs of the same generation with AMD, the AMD laptop CPUs starting with Phoenix (Ryzen 7440/7540/7640/7840/7940) have made a great jump in the video encoding/decoding speed, exceeding the older Intel CPUs, and they should be suitable for any such application. There are a huge number of models of cheap small NUC-like computers with AMD Phoenix or Hawk Point (Ryzen 8000 series) CPUs.
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        Good to know!
- 2y ago

benoau 2y ago

We're kind of stumbling into a golden age of home NAS devices and while there aren't any ready-to-go ECC options yet, you can buy lovely little cases to support your own components. I think we'll surely see ECC in the next generation of AOOSTAR and similar devices, nobody making these devices has any motivation to never implement ECC.

shiroiushi 2y ago
How exactly are companies like AOOSTAR going to implement ECC if it's not supported by the CPU vendor (which is Intel)? AMD CPUs are useless for these home NAS devices if your goal is to build a low-power media server, which I think is one of the main use-cases (why else would you want to store tens of terabytes of data at home?).
- benoau 2y ago
  ECC has been growing in support since ~12th generation Intel (currently 14th) and before that for AMD I think, so it is only a matter of time before this trickles down into the little NAS boxes.
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    >ECC has been growing in support since ~12th generation Intel (currently 14th) It is? How so? I don't see it anywhere outside their server and embedded products. The server-grade stuff isn't appropriate for "the little NAS boxes" used at home because of both expense and more importantly power consumption, and the embedded stuff just isn't really available to consumers (so it might be potentially great for a company like Synology that builds consumer-friendly pre-built NAS boxes running on proprietary software, but it's not useful to people building their own DIY NAS boxes running open-source software).
    - sirn 2y ago
      ECC is supported on any higher end 12th/13th Gen, but it's locked behind a chipset feature lock. If you can find any board that uses W680 (e.g. W680D4U-2L2T which can be had on Amazon for $569), then it's possible to use ECC UDIMM on Intel Core and have ECC detected/reported.
      - shiroiushi 2y ago
        >e.g. W680D4U-2L2T which can be had on Amazon for $569 Yeah, that cost puts it out of reach for the typical home users building relatively inexpensive little DIY media server boxes, and places it firmly in "server" territory. A standard motherboard for these CPUs (typically using a B760 chipset) is a very small fraction of that cost. It's good to know this factoid, but it still basically supports my prior assertion that on Intel, ECC support is basically only for servers.
- justinclift 2y ago
  The very old HP Microserver Gen7's used a low power AMD cpu, as did the original Gen10 model. The Gen7 things would never be useful for transcoding on cpu though, waaaaaay too underpowered. But they did have a PCIe slot for add-in cards (ie small gpu or network card).
  - shiroiushi 2y ago
    Of course you can add a GPU card on the PCIe slot, but this 1) takes away a slot, and PCIe lanes, that you might want to use for connecting storage devices (such as a SATA HBA card), and 2) this will probably poorly affect your system's overall power consumption, which is a big factor for home users building NAS/media server boxes. Intel's QuickSync performs extremely well, with very low power (esp at idle) for 4k transcoding, for very low cost, while not needing any PCIe lanes; it's why these CPUs are so popular for this application. Unfortunately, Intel stupidly refuses to allow ECC support on non-Xeon chips, so that's a big drawback, as ECC is really useful for a storage server (or really anywhere).
    - justinclift 2y ago
      > Intel stupidly refuses to allow ECC support on non-Xeon chips They at least used to support ECC on some models of i3 chips as well. My understanding was that was specifically to support ECC on lower power NAS systems. Random examples: • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/90729/intel-core-i3-6100-processor-3m-cache-3-70-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/90729/i... (6th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/97455/intel-core-i3-7100-processor-3m-cache-3-90-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/97455/i... (7th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/129944/intel-core-i3-8100t-processor-6m-cache-3-10-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/129944/... (8th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/190886/intel-core-i3-9100f-processor-6m-cache-up-to-4-20-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/190886/... (9th gen i3) • https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/203899/intel-core-i3-10100te-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-60-ghz.html https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/203899/... (10th gen i3) Looking over random i3 pages from 11th gen onwards though, I'm not even seeing ECC mentioned on the pages at all. It's not a "yes/no" item like on the older generation ones pages, it's completely absent (from the ones I just checked). :(

shiroiushi 2y ago

The problem with those inexpensive Ryzens is that they don't have iGPUs with Intel QuickSync so they can't transcode video with high efficiency. This makes them unsuitable for use for media servers, which is what a lot of people are doing with these chips these days: building home NAS/media servers that combine both functions into a single, small, low-power unit. You put a bunch of HDDs in it so you can store tens of terabytes of movies using RAID to protect against drive failures, and run Jellyfin or Plex on it. Plus you can use the box for other regular NAS tasks too, as well as many other convenient applications. Intel chips are virtually required here since AMD chips are useless for transcoding, and require external GPU cards which destroy the system's power efficiency which was one of the main points of getting one of these low-power Intel chips in the first place.

Teever 2y ago
Doesn't AMD make Ryzens that also have iGPUs that work with jellyfin/plex transcoding?
- shiroiushi 2y ago
  From what I've read, the AMD offerings here are not at all competitive with Intel's QuickSync.
  - adrian_b 2y ago
    While Intel QuickSync remains faster in CPUs of the same generation with AMD, the AMD laptop CPUs starting with Phoenix (Ryzen 7440/7540/7640/7840/7940) have made a great jump in the video encoding/decoding speed, exceeding the older Intel CPUs, and they should be suitable for any such application. There are a huge number of models of cheap small NUC-like computers with AMD Phoenix or Hawk Point (Ryzen 8000 series) CPUs.
    - shiroiushi 2y ago
      Good to know!
2y ago